Wow!! I cannot tell you how excited I am about
completing my Master’s degree. As many
of you know, being a wife, mother, full-time teacher and a college student is
tremendous work. This program has taken
great dedicated and commitment. I have thoroughly
enjoyed my learning and growing through this program especially the capstone
class. One of my deep felt learnings
from this program is the importance of knowing my own biases. Of course everyone has biases but do people
really know their own biases and know how those biases are influencing their
work, relationships and ability to help other people. During this program I found that knowing my
own biases and being aware of them is extremely important in forming
relationships and helping children reach their developmental potential. A second deep felt learning from this program
is just the knowledge of what diversity entails and the importance of making
sure that every family that enters my preschool feels welcomed, needed, visible
and appreciated. A third deep felt
learning from this program is the importance and necessity of having strong
effective relationships with coworkers, students and the families you
serve. I have always felt this is a very
important quality but this program has highlighted the necessity of
relationships and their impact on children’s growth and development. It has also highlighted the necessity of
relationships on my own professional growth.
One short-term
goal I have is to actually use some of the technology I talked about in my
capstone project in my own classroom. I
have already created a Class Messenger account for each of my preschool classes
and I am excited to use this technology with my students and their
families. For a long-term goal I would
eventually like to be able to use a digital tool such as Evernote to help
families have more opportunities to actually see what their children do in
class each day. Another long-term goal
would be to continue to learn and grow in the field of early childhood
education. I want to do the best I can
do to help reach more children and make an early childhood education more
attainable for all children in my city and state.
Then for a little fun I wanted to leave you with a video of my son trying body surfing on our family vacation this summer. The video wouldn't work so I am leaving you with a few pictures! My son is eight years old and was very nervous and unsure if he was going to try this activity. In the end he tried it, loved it and did it multiple times. I think it is a good reminder to all of us of the importance of getting out of your comfort zone, trying something new and watching the amazing results! Best of luck to all of you in your future endeavors!